The next few days passed in a slow, abrasive blur that left Tessa tired, ready for something other than rest and routine. As time passed, she put off scheduling the meeting with Doctor Altaker that Virek had requested until at last the Doctor himself tracked her down during a session of tennis she was playing against herself and picked up the racket for the opposing team. Using the medium of the sport as a means to loosen her up for looking at the things that were really bothering her, he gave her a run for her money on more fronts than just the physical, and in the end, she left refreshed, more in control of the emotions that broiled and simmered within her like an ominous front of heavy clouds. She was grateful the Doctor had taken the time and the initiative to catch her in the middle of a workout instead of waiting for her to set aside time for the meeting she might never have scheduled otherwise, but when he extended the offer to take the conversation further, to discuss Izzy and her transfer over dinner, Tessa politely declined and retired to her room. It wasn’t him, wasn’t his advances– it was the simple fact that thinking about Izzy killed her appetite outright, curdled any desire she might have for anything other than brooding in the dark, losing herself in thought in the back of the shower.
As the Von der Tann plowed on through the heavens, she saw Phoebe several more times, mostly in passing. Succumbing to the young Lieutenant’s bright insistence over a console message, she’d agreed to another drink and a bite to eat after a training session, but the whole thing fell through when she’d gone to the gym and found Phoebe in Izzy’s old place at the punching bag, making the best of it despite her lack of practice and weaker frame. The young lieutenant had tried to get her to stay, to get her to talk about what was bothering her, what had suddenly lodged itself in her soul like an immovable spire of bladed ice, but the motions she made were too much like Izzy, reminded Tessa too much of the way Izzy might have reached out in an attempt to comfort her. Tessa closed her eyes, apologized, and agreed to meet Phoebe again later, to share a drink with her in the Lower Mess and discuss tech specs on a series of new Seindrive modifications that weren’t due to be installed for several more weeks. Surrounded by technicians and non-commissioned officers, they quickly had a crowd of interested hardware heads gathered around them, picking apart the new upgrades and mincing the details about what would interface with what, and what wouldn’t. Far from being the dry conversation that Tessa at first suspected it might be, running over the tech specs with a handful of greasemonkeys who made their living working in the guts of the rigs that pilots like Phoebe and Tessa flew turned out to be exactly what she needed– something fresh that got her mind off Izzy, gave her purpose– even if only for a little while.
That same night, sleep hung somewhere unreachable, wouldn’t come to her in the night, just left her staring into the darkness with eyes that searched aimlessly, unable to find the peace that they sought. Eventually giving up and wondering if Phoebe was still awake, maybe up for another drink in the Officer’s mess, she ran a passive check through her console, breathed a tired sigh as the system returned a polite do-not-disturb signal. Feeling the onset of darker emotions, the return of a tense, brooding stillness that crept insidiously up inside her, paralyzing soul and heart, she closed her eyes, pushed headfirst out the door and left the room that still smelled like Izzy behind.
Sometime later, in the dead silence of a deeper night than the void and stars scrolling all around her on the Von’s observation deck, Cordova arrived unexpectedly, brought some light into that depthless darkness when he handed her a cup of coffee, sat with her and made an effort at loose, casual conversation. She smiled as she cradled the little cup and thanked him, sipped as he offered sympathies and jokes that she tried to appreciate, but that ultimately did little more than distract her from the darker thoughts still clinging to her psyche like everpresent clouds. Misunderstanding, he eventually lapsed into an uncomfortable silence, sipping his coffee and staring blankly off into the silicon representation of space that sprawled all around them.
Again, Tessa found herself apologizing, but Cordova shook his head at the attempt, offered to share some of his problems or stories with her if it would make her feel better. In the end, she accepted, and the two pilots discussed Jose’s wife, her charms and her idiosyncracies, the little things as well as the big things until the conversation ultimately strayed toward older stories of better times in orbit of worlds that had long since been taken by the Coralate or left behind as the Von had forged farther and farther into the frontier. When the two parted again to go their own separate ways in the hopes of getting even a shred of sleep out of that night, they parted as friends, promised to keep track and keep up with each other no matter how far away the Von or the Ultima Thila took them from one another.
And then, somehow, the day came, the day Tessa had been half wishing for, half dreading, and as she stood before the mirror again, naked and wet from the shower, she knew that fate had finally caught up with her, had finally closed the distance of time down to a matter of moments, fragments of an hour.
Pulling in a deep breath, she met the eyes of her reflection steadily, evenly.
“Okay.” She breathed. “This is it.”
“Time to meet my destiny.”
